At least for this season, there’s no place like home for the St. Louis Cardinals.
The Cardinals used their return home Monday to break a season-high, four-game losing streak in a 6-0 victory over the Phillies. After Philadelphia cruised to an 11-1 win Tuesday, St. Louis will look to resume its successful home form when right-hander Jack Flaherty starts the rubber game of the three-game series on Wednesday afternoon.
After the Monday result, St. Louis, which is accustomed to playing before a sold-out Busch Stadium, sported the largest home and road winning percentage difference in the National League.
The Cardinals held a .765 winning percentage at home under the arch but featured just a .444 victorious mark on the road — a difference of plus-.321. Meanwhile, the Phillies were second with a plus-.282 difference.
“We’re looking to get wins every night and take it day by day, and look at where the body of work takes us,” said Cardinals manager Mike Shildt, whose club is 13-5 at home. “It is important, for sure, to be able to play well at home.”
Flaherty (3-2, 4.17 ERA) will try to combat his biggest nemesis in his eighth start of 2019 — the long ball.
Home runs have been a problem for the 23-year-old, who has allowed eight this season.
In the former first-round pick’s last five starts, he has yielded seven dingers, including six in a dreadful three-start streak from April 10 to April 22.
Command was just as big a problem in his most recent outing last Friday against the Cubs in Chicago. He managed to fan nine, but he gave up a homer and four walks in 5 2/3 innings in his club’s 4-0 loss.
In one career start against the Phillies, Flaherty is 1-0 with a 1.17 ERA. He allowed only one run in 7 2/3 innings.
Despite being shutout in the first game in St. Louis, the first-place Phillies have been scoring runs all season long, just as they did Tuesday, when they got a grand slam from Bryce Harper as well as Rhys Hoskins’ team-leading 11th homer.
Right-hander Jerad Eickhoff (1-1, 2.05 ERA) will start for Philadelphia as it attempts to win the series finale.
Eickhoff has been a pleasant surprise and stabilizing force in the rotation after replacing struggling Nick Pivetta. The 28-year-old Eickhoff is 0-1 with a 4.50 ERA in his only career appearance against St. Louis.
Offensively, this year’s Phillies club resembles the franchise’s teams from the first decade of the 2000s, lineups buoyed by dynamic hitters like Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley.
The current Phillies went out in the offseason and bolstered their offense by acquiring the bats of Harper, Jean Segura, J.T. Realmuto and Andrew McCutchen — all of them All-Stars at some point in their careers.
The Philadelphia offense is producing quite a bounty — 5.22 runs per contest. The Phillies haven’t generated a figure that large over a full season since they averaged 5.51 runs per game in 2007.
Catcher Andrew Knapp said the Phillies’ plate prowess makes them feel they are never out of a game.
“We can give up one or two (runs), and in years past, maybe feel like we were behind the eight ball a little bit,” he said. “But now, we’ve just got to wait it out and trust that our offense is going to do what it’s going to do.”